Distorting history another form of terror, says historian

Kolkata, January 1

An attempt to “fabricate and distort history” is a terror of a different nature, general president of Indian History Congress KM Shrimali said, expressing concern over the shrinking space for reason and debate in the country.

The sole agenda behind the RSS-BJP trying to rewrite history was to create a Hindu nation, where minorities were treated as second-class citizens, he said. “It is a matter of concern that the space for reason and debate is shrinking in India. We have never witnessed such a disturbing trend. Those with little knowledge about history are trying to fabricate and thrust their idea. It is a terror of a different nature,” the former history Prof at Delhi University said.

The RSS and the BJP were determined to divide the nation on religious grounds, Shrimali said, adding that history was a discipline of reason and could not be written with “fabricated truths, imagination or myth-making.”

The historian explained that Hindutva and Hinduism were different concepts with the former being a political ideology. Shrimali said Hindutva was being used as a tool to access power.

Reacting to a RSS-BJP criticism that a distorted version of history was being taught in India by the “Left and liberal historians”, Shrimali said historians need not take lessons on nationalism from those “who had surrendered before the British during the Independence movement”.

Shrimali’s view found resonance in eminent historian Irfan Habib, who said “history depends on events of facts” and any attempt to invent facts would be treated as fiction. — PTI

Hits out at Sangh Parivar

Reason and debate have become biggest casualties in Sangh Parivar’s interpretation of history. There are ways of understanding mythology... Not everything that is part of mythology is history... But you don’t enter into arguments, you try to bully people. That’s not the way to write history. KM Shrimali, ex-prof of history